“Christian?”
“He’s dying,” he rasps hoarsely.
“What?” I breathe.
Christian staggers toward me until he plops down onto our couch and lies across my lap. His arms wrap around my body and he buries his face against my stomach. Then his body begins to tremble, his chest is heaving, and he is so broken.
It’s a terrible kind of pain to see the person you are so devastatingly in love with cry. To see them in pain. You don’t just see it though, you feel it as though it was yours too, and his pain is my own. What burns him, burns me. What hurts him, hurts me—killsme.
I gently brush his hair back, lingering to scratch at the back of his head, and I watch the way my lone tear splats on his face. “Christian,” I croak.
“They want me to give him half my liver, but I’m not even sad that he’s dying,” he cries. “I don’t care.”
“Then, baby…” I sniffle. “What’s wrong?”
Christian gasps for air, struggling to breathe through his sobs. His arms around me tighten.
“Lana, I hate myself,” he sobs.
“No,” I breathe, my heart shattering into unrepairablepieces. “No. No, don’t say that to me. Christian, I—I—” I hiccup on the sobs. “We—I…We can get you help. I’ll get you help.”
“I hate myself,” Christian wails, curling into himself. “And I don’t want you to hate me too.”
“I couldneverhate you, Christian,” I croak. “I love you. I love you all the time. Even when I don’t like you, I love you. And I’m pretty sureI’ll love you until we are nothing—even then.” A sob gets caught in my throat and I swallow it down to say, “Christian, I love you. And I only wish you could love yourself the same way.”
“I don’t.”
“You will,” I rasp. “We’ll get you help, okay?”
He cries harder.
“Hey,” I whisper. “Baby, hey.”
I hold his face in my hands and his body shifts on my lap to look up at me. And my heart breaks further when I see the red in his eyes, the stains of salt on his wet cheeks, and his quivering chin.
“We’ll get you help,” I say. “Okay?”
Christian nods and rasps, “Okay.”
Then I smell it on his breath.
I blink and he must know that I know now because he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”
“Christian—”
The man I love breaks all over again into pieces that don’t fit in my two hands. I don’t have enough glue and the pieces are slipping between my fingers and I can’t pick them all up right now. I need to—I want to. I can’t see him like this. I won’t survive this pain, and I’m afraid that he won’t either.
I’m afraid of coming home and finding him…
“I’m sorry,” he sobs, turning into my stomach again. “I’m sorry. I hate myself, Lana. I hate myself.”
“Stop,” I whisper. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, screaming at the universe.
“I’m sorry,” Christian cries. “I couldn’t do it. I’m not—” he gasps for air “—I’m not strong enough. I—I?—”
“Shhh,” I coo and hold him close. “Later.”
I urge Christian up from my lap until he’s sitting up. I stand and take his hands so he stands too, and I lead him to our bedroom. I settle in the middle of our mattress, lying on my side. “Come, baby.”
